I've walked most of the Appalachian Trail...its ups and downs are a lot like life. I love life, but EMT work has taught me that life is uncertain for us all. Let's talk about how to make the world work. There's lots of people who've got to live with what we leave behind.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

$8,000 Per Iraqi

Well, the cost of the Iraq war now exceeds $200 billion, a number that even an accountant can hardly comprehend. The war cost is so big that it's almost one-third of the deficit that our conservative Republican president and congress will ring up this year - an equally alarming number!

To help put the Iraq war cost in perspective, just think of it as $8,000 for every man, woman, and child in that unfortunate country. Don't you think we would have been better off by just offering every Iraqi $5,000 upon the overthrow of Saddam and the installation of a constitutional democracy? That would be the free market in action!

And we now have almost 2,100 American deaths in Iraq. That's one GI for every 12,000 Iraqis. Or, to put it differently, 84 GI's have died to save every Iraqi area with about the population of greater Rochester, New York. That's quite a sacrifice, but fortunately the U.S. losses do not include any children of the politicians who started this war.

Time to put a timetable on the board and let the Iraqis stand up for themselves. The price of leaving is right!